Once Bitcoins become a serious threat ...

[Anon136]

Of course, there are "extreme" ways to get around this

These methods are extreme right now because there isn't a great deal of financial incentive to build devises to simplify this process however people are working on building flash drive sized physical bitcoin wallets that will be virtually unhackable. Basically they are unhackable because these devises by design only contain enough memory to store a few bitstrings which means there is physically no place to put any malware.

since im just a noob who doesn't really know what hes talking about heres a thread you can check out https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122438.0

[Anon136]

But what they can do with 51%?  Not much.

They can destroy trust.

Basically it's: "currency = trust".

Without trust, there's no currency.

When trust is gone, this happens (beer becomes pretty expensive *g*):


(Zimbabwe Dollar)

its a good time to be a rubber band manufacturer in Zimbabwe no?

[twolifeinexile]

Bitcoin could be controlled by government , just as gold

[amlorusso]

The banks will love Bitcoin. Has anyone ever thought of that possibility?

The banks have love/hate relationship with lawmakers: they love their protection, but hate their regulation. Bitcoin may free banks from regulation, but it will leave them without protection as well. Banks worked long and hard to get themselves in their current position and I doubt they are willing to give it up.

There's an alternate theory that once you are established you actually love regulation because regulatory compliance places a larger burden on smaller operations giving larger operations a competitive advantage.

[twolifeinexile]

The banks will love Bitcoin. Has anyone ever thought of that possibility?

The banks have love/hate relationship with lawmakers: they love their protection, but hate their regulation. Bitcoin may free banks from regulation, but it will leave them without protection as well. Banks worked long and hard to get themselves in their current position and I doubt they are willing to give it up.

There's an alternate theory that once you are established you actually love regulation because regulatory compliance places a larger burden on smaller operations giving larger operations a competitive advantage.

Absolutely true. Big establishments all loves certain burdensome regulations (as long as not too much, not too little that makes new comers costs prohibitive and profit still good)

[Fuzzy]

I would welcome any organization to try to "destroy" bitcoin, if only so I could laugh at them... Ha ha ha ha!

It would be healthy for decentralized currency as a whole if someone succeeded in damaging bitcoin, as it would give rise to an even more resilient strain of cryptocurrency.

[EarlyCuyler]

I for one am NO friend of banks and really do hope Bitcoin can at least become a viable alternative to them.  We have built this society to revolve around banks and the other ill-reputed companies that go hand in hand with them.  It's systematically impossible to live a day to day life without some of your earnings being syphoned off to some banker somewhere.  You can't pay a power bill without the,m touching your money.  Don't even get me started on the "fees" they charge. 

Anyway, in spite of my rant, I'd love to be able to use BTC without ever seeing a bank again.  The only alternative to banks at the moment is basically a hand to mouth existence, which has been made extremely difficult by the government.  /rant

[rovsky]

Bitcoin is an electronic gold standard...

Bitcoin is like napster. 

This.

Only Bitcoin avoids the key failings that brought down Napster. So Bitcoin is already a lot closer to BitTorrent -- PayPal, Liberty Reserve, Pecunix were all more like Napster than Bitcoin.

None of those suffered any major attacks, so Bitcoin hasn't had that learning experience. If somebody goes after Bitcoin, whatever evolves out of it may inspire a new version of BitTorrent (or whatever) unlike anything we've ever seen, as well.

Next up... HiggsBosonCoin!